Review - The Matrix of Visual Culture - Working With Deleuze in Film Theory

Film-Philosophy , 13.
1 April 2009
Review: Patricia Pisters (2003)

The Matrix of Visual Culture:
Working with Deleuze in Film Theory
Stanford: Stanford University Press
ISBN 0 8047 4028 3
303 pp.
D. H . Flem ing
University of St Andrews
Since the original publication of his cinema books in the 1980s and their later
translation into English (Cinema 1 in 1986 and Cinema 2 in 1989) the work of
Gilles Deleuze has offered academics and scholars fresh and invigorating
thought paradigms for imagining and working with cinema. The millennium
brought renewed academic interest in Deleuzian conceptualisations and a new
wave of study has emerged that increasingly incorporates and adapts his
theories far beyond their original scope. Indeed, Deleuze’s ideas influence much
modern academic work, and besides a growing number of conferences and
seminars dedicated to the study of his ideas, there also appear an ever growing
number of journals and collected papers that incorporate and reference his
145
Fleming, D.H. (2009) Review: The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory,
Film-Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 1: pp. 145-155. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2009v13n1/fleming.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
Film-Philosophy , 13.1 April 2009
work. Gregory Flaxman’s edited collection The Brain Is the Screen (2000) is one
example of note singled out here. Recent monographs often strive to clarify
Deleuze’s notoriously dense and complex style and make it more accessible to a
wider readership, with an early pioneer of this trend being found in D.N.
Rodowick’s seminal work Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine (1997). Other scholars
increasingly incorporate Deleuze’s work in a variety of new ways, invoking his
ideas for describing such diverse concepts as ‘haptic’ modes of embodied vision
within intercultural cinema (Laura Marks’ The Skin of the Film [2000]), and
describing ‘affective’ cinema in horror genres (Anna Powell Deleuze and Horror
Film [2005]). More recently the work of Deleuze has been adapted and
reconceptualised (hybridised if you will) for understanding issues of time, space,
and national identity within contemporary cinema (David Martin-Jones Deleuze,
Cinema and National Identity [2006]), and completely reworked in order to
describe cinema as an organic thinking intelligence in its own capacity (Daniel
Frampton Filmosophy [2006]).
The work of Deleuze therefore continues to offer fresh perspectives and
paradigms for understanding and analysing film, and within The Matrix of Visual
Culture (2003), Patricia Pisters demonstrates how it is possible to work with
Deleuze’s ideas and concepts with reference to contemporary film theory. The
book proves of particular interest and value as Pisters strives to make Deleuze’s
concepts more productive through applying them to a wide range of
audiovisual images, and examines a diverse range of cinematic texts drawn from
different spheres of filmic production and national or artistic traditions.
Unusually Pisters further strives to make no hierarchical distinctions between
art films and the images of popular culture, and so examines an exciting array of
texts that range from modern Disney cartoons through to African political third
cinema. Pisters primarily utilises Deleuzian theories to investigate new forms of
metacinematic consciousness and nonpersonal forms of individuation hoping to
demonstrate what these ‘different modes make [it] possible to see, think, and
feel’ (16). To clarify these differences for the reader, Pisters returns throughout
to a comparison with more traditional and familiar psychoanalytic analyses of
146
film, which helps illustrate the significant divergences between the two
applications and avoids any evaluation or privileging of either model.
The Matrix of Visual Culture departs from the work of Deleuze himself, and
that of previous scholars like Steven Shaviro (The Cinematic Body [1993]), and
predicts the future, pluralistic and comparative works of scholars such as Powell.
The alternative model offered by Deleuze moves away from a model of a
mind/body split and of images as representations which are only accessible to a
disembodied eye/‘I’, proposing instead a rhizomatically structured model of the
brain and conceptualising cinema as a form of event. Pisters here elaborates on
the implications of the Cartesian position, in which the eye is important for
collecting all the impressions which are unified by an a priori ‘I’ which
synthesises all experiences. This subject finds itself before and beyond
perception and experience and is necessarily transcendental. Contrasting this
position Pisters ‘puts Deleuze to work’ (223) throughout the book, and in a lively
investigation attempts to demonstrate that cinema is instead part of the world
itself rather than just a reflection of it. In addition, Pisters also has a second
agenda within this book, to find answers to the pragmatic question of how to
work with Deleuze in analysing specific expressions of contemporary popular
media culture, an increasingly popular trend amongst contemporary Deleuzian
scholars and theorists.
The main thrust and value of the book’s first section lies in Pisters’
comparative readings of metacinematic films through ‘a transcendental
Cartesian/Kantian/Lacanian tradition, which is represented by Žižek, and an
immanent Spinozian/Bergsonian/(Nietzschean) tradition, which is elaborated by
Deleuze’ (21). Thus, beginning with the familiar work of Hitchcock (Rear Window
[1954] and Vertigo [1958]) Pisters demonstrates what these different
conceptualisations make it possible, or impossible, for spectators to see, think,
and feel when watching each film. Pisters manages to demonstrate the
ramifications of each paradigm upon the cinematic subject, who in both models
is predominantly defined by desire, but with desire being conceived of
differently in each instance. By succinctly clarifying these differences the book
helpfully outlines how, in a Freudian and Lacanian tradition, the subject’s desire
147
is based on lack, with the character necessarily being a guilty subject and cogito
desiring enjoyment and ‘jouissance, which has its impossible origin in the Real’
(19). After examining the ramifications of this perspective on the Hitchcock films
Pisters then considers the same film/characters through a Deleuzian/Spinozian
paradigm. Here desire is based on making new and rewarding compositions and
accordingly the subject is ‘not a fixed and transcendentally controlled entity but
an immanent singular body whose borders of selfhood (or subjectivity) are
challenged in time and by time’ (20). This subject is further articulated by various
‘becomings’ based on a positive desire to make new enriching connections and
changes. Pisters then refreshes and updates the debate by shifting her attention
onto more modern meta-cinematic films, including Strange Days (Kathryn
Bigelow, 1995), which she uses to demonstrate and illuminate some of the more
complex Deleuzian notions regarding a new age of perception. Strange Days is
used in this manner to illustrate how Bergson’s futuristic insights have actually
come true, and that we now inhabit a metacinematic universe where a ‘new
camera consciousness has entered our perception’ (16). Analysing the film and
its removal of the distancing camera and projector leads to a clearer
understanding of the direct physical involvement of body and brain within the
metacinematic universe and the collapsing boundary between self and other,
perceiver and perceived. These direct perceptions, Pisters clarifies, force us to
think differently about images that are no longer representations and asks us to
understand them through a Bergsonian paradigm where ‘matter, body, and
brain are the image’ (26). By engaging with the overloaded visual style of this
particular film, Pisters manages to demonstrate with clear and concise examples
how a Deleuzian body-without-organs (BwO) - which challenges the boundaries
of the self same organism - is ultimately placed upon the plane of immanence,
the plane of images.
Following the logic of these investigations and developing them over a
series of other chapters, Pisters also elaborates upon ‘Material Aspects of
Subjectivity’ by engaging with, and offering an alternative view of the classic
mind/body split of Western philosophy. The value and aim of this investigation is
to situate the body on the plane of immanence, and elaborate upon this
148
complex philosophical idea and axiomatic notion inherent to Bergson and

Deleuze’s work. Here Pisters works through one of the most confusing notions
for non-Deleuzian scholars and asks, if the image is no longer a representation of
matter but is matter, what then is perception? In helping readers to grasp this,
Pisters engages with examples of horror cinema, a genre Deleuze somewhat
brushed over within his own cinema books, and focuses upon the abject and the
monstrosities of the ‘flesh’: the most obvious and overt sign of the physical body.
Starting with contemporary cinema’s recurrent and increasingly more explicit
fascination with flesh (particularly within gore and splatter films) Pisters
examines four films from the 1970s and 1980s where flesh occupies a central
place and demonstrates a narrative preoccupation with the body and its nature.
Turning to Deleuze’s different categories of image types to help explain and
describe the material and temporal aspects of subjectivity, Pisters offers an
invaluable introduction to these different notions and grounds them in
comprehendible cinematic examples. Perhaps the strongest and most
compelling reading and elaboration picks up on Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki
Bouki (1973) and examines the film in terms of temporal aspects of subjectivity
within time-image cinema; itself one of the most difficult and complicated
examples of a Deleuzian image type. Pisters here describes how the film is
defined in terms of, and floats between, what is actual and what is virtual,
between past and present, between real and lyrical fantasy. The major strength
of the reading lies in its drawing attention to how the film achieves these effects
through various cinematic means, including a heautonomous use of sound
which functions to interconnect and overlap different sheets of time and create
interstices. The subjects of this film are also investigated and contrasted to more
conventional characters of action-image cinema, and are found to be depicted
differently, as wanderers, not knowing any more how to act and react, and so
open up to the virtual, to time, dream, and hallucination. This series of readings
demonstrates the fundamental differences between the movement-image and
time-image modes of cinema and help the reader to come to grips with these
radical aesthetic paradigms. The hard segmental lines of Touki Bouki are also
investigated and outlined in terms of the colonial past, but even here for Pisters
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this is not divided into clear oppositions and so the world itself appears out of
joint. By examining four films which predominantly employ different image
types Pisters is able to clearly demonstrate how ‘The action-image produces
action and actual bodies, which has an effect of excitement; the relation image
calls for interpretation of the metaphors that are displayed and produces
symbolic meat; the affection-image works directly on our sensitivity, in this case
on (our) passive and sad affects… [and] the time-image produces a subjectivity in
time’ (75). In this way Pisters produces a clear and concise introduction to the
key image concepts through eclectic in-depth textual analysis.
Usefully, other aspects of subjectivity and different image types are also
examined elsewhere, with Pisters turning her attention to a cinema of bodies
which raises questions of ethics in relation to violence, and offers new ways to
conceive of violence by utilising a Deleuzian toolbox. This is predominantly
achieved through examining assemblages and the rhizomatic network
associated with this concept, and through introducing a Nietzschean and
Spinozian conception of the body and ethics. Again complex philosophy is
plainly elaborated and Pisters outlines how a subject attempts to create as many
joyful encounters and connections as possible in order to increase its power to
act and live, with violence in this model being borne from bad encounters that
have the affect of sadness: which then leads to hate and anger. Pisters further
outlines how ‘violence often is associated with impulses and drives’ (87) and
relates this to impulse-images which she clarifies through Deleuze who argues
that impulses and drives can be viewed as political options for navigating certain
dead-ends and blockages to reach joyful passions instead. Descriptions and
examples of impulse-images are introduced, concretised in cinematic examples,
and outlined as situated between the affection-image and the action-image,
being full of symptoms and fetishes. By grounding these complex notions in
modern and popular examples of cinema such as Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarintino,
1994) and Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) Pisters opens up Deleuzian ideas to a
wider audience and grants valuable insight into how his concepts can be more
fruitfully adapted and applied to commercial cinema. Examining notions of
schizophrenia in contemporary Hollywood and the ‘nouvelle violence’ Pisters
150
reads the bodily bouts between Tyler and the narrator within Fight Club as
literal attacks on the beauty and glamour of consumption culture, and the film is
outlined as an example of action-image body cinema which is also
simultaneously a cinema of the brain; with an internally folded character
narrating the events in free indirect style. The schizophrenic dimension of the
film is interpreted through the violence directed towards symbols of capitalism
(which for Deleuze is itself a schizophrenic system that produces it own
antiproduction), and through the narrator who produces his own counterimage
which he fights to produce a class of violence. This investigation proves of
particular interest as violence is sketched as a political option on the line of
flight, and Fincher’s film is finally found, like Pulp Fiction, to present images ‘that
play with the status of the movement-image that become ‘contaminated’ with
characteristics of the time-image’ (104). Pisters similarly treats Pulp Fiction to an
in-depth analysis which helps draw attention to the differences between brain
and body cinema and elaborates these differences for the reader.
The final three chapters of the book are arranged into an interesting
subset which probes various different notions of ‘becoming’ - one of the major
axiomatic notions outlined within A Thousand Plateaus and related to the BwO -
and examines and clarifies what these various different lines of flight are and
entail. The subset begins with an examination of becoming-woman, the first step
in all becomings, and thereafter follows on logically and sequentially through
chapters and sections investigating becoming -child, -animal, -music, -molecular,
and (eventually) –imperceptible. This section works again to ground complex
Deleuzian notions in cinematic examples that are immediately comprehendible
for newcomers to these ideas. The set is inaugurated through examining the
attempt to do more than simply critique and transgress established and
segmented hard molar lines. Pisters states that every becoming ‘is a process and
an attempt to think differently, to see or feel something new in experience by
entering into a zone of proximity with somebody or something else’ (106).
Becoming-woman is outlined as the basis for total critique and described as a
procedure that allows one to live freely. Pisters interestingly adopts the
conceptual personae/aesthetic figure of Alice in Wonderland as the ideal
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subject who can aptly demonstrate this movement into an alternative universe
where things are measured differently, and uses her as an illustrative and
archetypal guide through the universe of becoming-woman. The Alice persona
is examined in a series of different incarnations that stretch from Carroll’s
original Alice through to the cyborg Alices of the contemporary cinematic age.
Thus, new technologies are described and outlined in terms of their ability to
change our perceptions and pull us into different conceptual universes, with
cinema being one such example which can alter human perception. In this way
the imbrication of human and technology is introduced to help demonstrate
and illustrate new paradigms for understanding and redefining the borders and
boundaries of the body.
Pisters continues to offer valuable insight and illumination into other
ideas of becoming by arguing that imagination is a ‘transformative force that
propels multiple, heterogeneous ‘becomings’ or repositioning of the subject’
(142) and investigates the consequences of these ideas upon the logic and
sensations of becoming-animal. These unusual Deleuzian notions are again
clarified and elaborated through the use of popular and familiar filmic examples
including analyses of The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984) and The Fly
(David Cronenberg, 1986). An original investigation into old myths and stories
also ensues, which engages with the relationship between humankind and
animals, and how traditional (binary) modes of thinking led to the association of
these in-between monsters (i.e. werewolves) with abjection or attempted to
interpret them as simple metaphors and allegories for certain human
behaviours and traits. The notion of becoming-child before becoming-animal is
introduced wherein the ‘child’ is outlined as a classical Spinozist. ‘For children,
every experience is new. Maybe it is for that reason that children have a
conception of the world that is closer to the idea of becoming-animal’ (151).
Pisters introduces cases of real wild-children and examines the conditions of
their becoming before returning to cinematic analysis via The Jungle Book
(Zoltan Korda, 1942) in order to explore notions of the wild child and the use of
affection-images (achieved here through the use of cinematic colour). Pisters
concludes from her observations that in all the cultural legends, myths, and
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narratives encountered, it is clear that the basic assumptions remain the same:
becoming-animal is considered a monstrous activity unless a child is involved in
it. This signal chapter works to clarify and contextualise complicated ideas and
offers the reader an abundance of concrete cinematic examples of these
unusual phenomena.
Also of great interest is a section which follows the lines of flight to their
natural ends and examines the ‘(De)Territorialising Forces of the Sound Machine’
and engages with the notion that ‘Deterritorialising forces allow music and
sound to become great lines of flight’ (188). Music is also discussed in Deleuzian
terms of the refrain (the proper content) which allows the creation of a stable
centre within the enormous black hole of chaos. The illuminating example of a
child singing in the dark to comfort itself is offered by way of example and is
related to the use of affective music within cinema to calm the audience and
demonstrate the power and effect music can have. In our modern age, the
notion of the refrain is understood to be in a direct relation with molecularised
forces, and Pisters works to contextualise and demonstrate this idea. Music is
discussed in terms of molecularising sound matter, and becomes capable of
harnessing nonsonorous forces such as Duration and Intensity. Using The
Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) to demonstrate how a territorial
conception of sound might work, Pisters once again engages complex Deleuzian
concepts with popular cinema. Here, sound is shown to gain prominence and
independence over the image and indicates a new paradigm for cinema: the
film adequately demonstrating that ‘what is in a man’s mind influences what he
sees and even more what he hears’ (193). Pisters also examines examples of
cinema where sound is similarly elevated or related to different forms of
becoming, including becoming-music, becoming-molecular, and eventually
becoming-imperceptible. Observing and analysing these various lines of flight
leads Pisters to conclude becoming-music is one of the most molecularising
ways of deterritorialising, but simultaneously an avenue for creating
‘‘transcendental’ mobile selves and collective identities’ (215).
This highly recommended book engages with complex Deleuzian
theories and applies them to various examples of popular and art cinema. Its
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main strengths undoubtedly lie in the clear and concise manner in which the
book compares and contrasts classical psychological approaches with the
radically divergent Deleuzian paradigm, whilst striving to clarify and concretise
these philosophical and theoretical notions within familiar examples of cinema.
Although this form of exercise can also be found in the work of other writers
such as Powell, the clarity and depth of Pisters’ work serves to set it apart.
Through reading single cinematic texts through both models and returning to
them throughout the entire book, Pisters manages to illustrate the possible
beneficial uses and applications of these divergent approaches, and clearly
illustrates for the reader what can be seen, felt, and understood when using
these respective approaches. Further - by relating Deleuzian concepts to
modern and popular forms of cinema including film’s like American Beauty (Sam
Mendes, 1999) and The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988) - Pisters manages to
anticipate the (need for) future monographs by scholars such as Martin-Jones
and Frampton who help bring Deleuze to new generations of film scholars. Even
though this book cannot offer as in-depth and thorough a Deleuzian
investigation into horror cinema, nor as comprehensive an examination into
third cinema as Powell and Marks are able to achieve in their respective book-
length monographs, Pisters does manage to offer an invaluable springboard into
these key areas of interest and arms the reader with an indispensable
knowledge of key terms and concepts required for these further forays.
Finally, other appealing aspects of the book lie in its well supplemented
‘Toolbox’ of Deleuzian terms and image types, a glossary to Cinema 1 and Cinema
2, detailed chapter notes, in-depth filmography, extensive bibliography and
guide to secondary sources and further readings related to this ever-growing
field of interest. The book will interest those already familiar with Deleuzian
concepts and interested in new ways of applying his work to contemporary film,
whilst also being of great use to readers yet to be introduced to this ‘beautiful
stranger’ (Kennedy 2000, 1).
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Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles (1986) Cinema 1 London: Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2 London: Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix (1988) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia London: The Athlone Press.
Flaxman, Gregory (ed) (2000) The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the
Philosophy of Cinema Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Frampton, Daniel (2006) Filmosophy London: Wallflower Press
Kennedy, Barbara M. (2000) Deleuze and Cinema Edinburgh, Edinburgh

University Press.
Marks, Laura U (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment,
and the Senses Durham: Duke University Press.
Martin-Jones, David (2006) Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative

Time in National Contexts Edinburgh, Edinburgh university Press.
Powell, Anna (2005) Deleuze and Horror Film Edinburgh, Edinburgh University
Press.
Rodowick, D.N. (1997) Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine Durham, Duke University
Press.
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Film-Philosophy , 13.

Review: Patricia Pisters (2003)

complex philosophical idea and axiomatic notion inherent to Bergson and

Deleuze, Gilles (1986) Cinema 1 London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2 London: Continuum.

Frampton, Daniel (2006) Filmosophy London: Wallflower Press

Kennedy, Barbara M. (2000) Deleuze and Cinema Edinburgh, Edinburgh

Martin-Jones, David (2006) Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative

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